The apocalypse is in the air these days. Todd Berger’s It’s a Disaster is the first of four end-of-the-world comedies set for release this year—the others being May’s Rapture-Palooza, June’s This Is the End, and August’s The World’s End—and it sets the bar very high for those to come. A character study of eight self-centered friends who congregate for brunch, soon discover their cell phones, Internet, and TV are dead, then learn that they’re in the middle of World War III, It’s a Disaster starts off threatening to be an insufferable exercise in hipsterism.
Emma and Pete’s marriage is on the rocks—they’re hosting the brunch so as to announce their divorce—because Emma (Erinn Hayes) slept with Buck (Kevin M. Brennan) and Pete (Blaise Miller) slept with Lexi (Rachel Boston). Yes, Buck and Lexi are a couple too, and they are basically closeted swingers. All seem like clichés: Emma is an uptight suburbanite with hair carefully parted, red lipstick strategically applied, and pearls lovingly draped. Pete is a classic yuppie bordering on a midlife crisis. Buck is a stoner washout with a Hulk Hogan mustache. Lexi is a free-spirited glockenspiel player who’s proud of the fact that she and Buck consummated their marriage in the bathroom of a TGI Fridays.
As for the rest of the brunch attendees, Emma and Pete’s doctor friend Tracy (Julia Stiles) is a mess of neuroses, maybe because she exclusively dates crazy men, or because none of her friends believe that her boyfriends have been crazy. Her new bf, Glen (David Cross, in full Tobias Fünke mode), seems more promising: he’s a fourth-grade history teacher, and the only crazy thing about him is that he’s okay with shutting off the 1812 Overture right before its famous climax. At least he’s not like Shane (Jeff Grace), Hedy’s (America Ferrera) long-term fiancé, who shuns human interaction at the brunch in favor of obsessively bidding online on a rare Alpha Flight comic book.
So yeah, all those characters sound like clichés. On paper they most definitely are. But when brought to life by this talented ensemble, they’re anything but. And once it becomes clear that their lives as they’ve known them are over — an unknown attacker drops dirty bombs and nerve gas on New York, Los Angeles, Orlando, and multiple other cities — then it becomes really interesting. Especially once they realize that the nerve gas will very shortly seep into Emma and Pete’s house and kill them all. It’s like Portlandia meets Melancholia, and it’s fascinating to see how each of the characters orients himself or herself toward the prospect of imminent death.
Worry wort comic-book freak Shane leads the charge to tape up the doors and windows and try to find some way to survive, while endlessly speculating over who attacked them — the enemy couldn’t have been from this world, right? — and planning to deal with the post-apocalyptic motorcycle gangs they’ll surely face if they live. His completely neglected fiancée Hedy, a chemistry teacher, goes into a negative panic and starts making home-cooked Ecstasy to cope. Tracy sets up one of the best jokes of the movie by lamenting all the things she never did in her life: she never went to Europe, never went to the ballet, never fell in love, never watched The Wire. The response of Glen? "All of those things are overrated…except for The Wire.” Oh, and as for Cross's Glen? Well, you’ll have to witness his unique solution for dealing with Armageddon yourself.
It’s a tricky thing to mine humor from a feel-bad situation as thoroughly awful as this — Berger even shoots his movie like an Ingmar Bergman chamber drama — but whereas this summer’s all-star comic extravaganza This Is the End appears to strive for raunchy belly laughs, It’s a Disaster settles for a general mood of wry amusement as its characters ponder questions of their own mortality that they’ve probably never pondered before…and maybe still aren’t. Two of the couples at least, Emma and Pete and Buck and Lexi, are so self-absorbed that even the end of the world can’t make them look beyond themselves: Emma and Pete are still squabbling with each other over past infidelities, and Buck and Lexi can’t overcome their “party on!” attitude toward life to appreciate the gravity of their situation. When Lexi asks Buck if he thinks there’s a band in heaven they’ll get to join once they pass through the pearly gates, Buck says, “I know there is, and we’re going to be a part of it. ‘Cause guess what they need? A glockenspielist.”
For his film Sans Soleil Chris Marker wrote, “I’ve been round the world several times and now only banality still interests me.” He has a kindred spirit in Berger, who seems amused and even a little charmed by humanity’s boundless penchant for the mundane. Berger doesn’t place himself above his characters, which makes it all the easier to imply the question: what would you do if you knew you only had hours to live? Would you suddenly experience life as exceptionally heightened and sensually gratifying? Or would nothing really change? It’s fitting that It’s a Disaster should be released the same weekend as Terrence Malick’s To the Wonder, a film that insists upon finding holiness and serene beauty in every single shot — and by extension life itself. It’s a Disaster recognizes how much of the human experience takes place in the realm of the banal, and just how okay that is.
3.5/5
What do you think? Tell Christian Blauvelt directly on Twitter @Ctblauvelt and read more of his reviews on Rotten Tomatoes!
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If you had the choice between watching two stars duke it out in person week after week or watch them have passive aggressive words on Twitter every so often, which would you choose? The televised version of Celebrity Hunger Games of course. That is why it is time for arch rivals Brandi Glanville and LeAnn Rimes to take their long-standing feud off of Twitter and put it in the real world. How can we make this happen and make something out of it that would be a television landmark for generations to come? Why, by putting LeAnn on the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, of course.
LeAnn, famously, started sleeping with her current husband, talking washboard Eddie Cibrian, while he was still married to Brandi, currently the lovably raging id of the best version of Bravo's keystone franchise. Their Twitter animosity rose up to the surface when LeAnn said she was happy to be spending the weekend with "her boys," meaning Eddie and Eddie and Brandi's two sons. Brandi launched back that they are not "her boys" they are Brandi and Eddie's boys and she is just a step mother. The venom that is just below the surface with these two is completely palpable. They absolutely seem to loathe each other but they have to get along for the children's sake. This sounds like just the kind of explosive relationship that should have cameras around it while it's happening. Please? Pretty please? Just think of the ratings of watching a tabloid story happen in real time.
It makes no sense why great guffawing god of programming Andy Cohen hasn't dropped his laughing gas mask and signed LeAnn for a contract to be on the show with Brandi. It's not like she has anything better to do. It would be a great platform to get her back into the public eye, sell her records or Lifetime movies or sheet collection at Kohls or whatever, and tell her side of the story. And it's not like the Real Housewives is an honor-bound institution that is above ruining a family so that screech monkeys will throw their feces at each other. Look what they've done to the Gorgas and Guidices at their New Jersey outpost (which still earns less than most New Jersey outposts of the Cheesecake Factory). What is keeping this from happening?
This thing already has all the makings of a Real Housewives episode. They're always bitching at each other about who said what in the press, who has more Twitter followers and what she says to them about the other, and how something said in a blog can create a whole season worth of drama. Oh, Housewives. The only reason they have new technology is so that they can find new ways to go to war with each other. Brandi is already talking about LeAnn on the show all the time, why can't we get here there to wag her finger in Brandi's face the way a Real Housewife should? The best way for LeAnn and Brandi is if we see it. We've heard about it, we've read about it, and some of us have even Twittered about it, but now it's time for the cameras. These ladies are already in the public eye, let's just make it a little bit more overt.
And, for the record, #TeamBrandi for the win!
Follow Brian Moylan on Twitter @BrianJMoylan
[Photo Credit: Bravo/WENN]
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It is a sad, sad day, as we sit here with puffy eyes and struggle at our desks while we try to figure out just how soon we can get out of this forsaken job and hit someplace with alcohol. It may be a bar, so that we can toast with our friends and hope that the revelry will help us forget our sorry lives, or it may be at home, with a glass – no, bottle – of white whine while we sigh on the couch and remember our forgotten friend. Probably the latter. That is what Kim would have wanted. That is how Kim would like to go out, with our tears moistening our cheeks and us pouring out a bottle of white wine over our TV set as it sparks and explodes in a ball of smoke. It doesn't matter if you ruin it. You don't need your TV anymore. Kim Zolciak is no longer going to be on the Real Hair Manglers of Mario Kart Palace. There is nothing left to watch.
No siree Bob, Kim has got the check. She is doneski. She does not pass go, she does not collecte $200. She is making like a tree and going. She is not letting the door hit here where the sun don't shine. Goodbye, Kim. Goodbye. We have watched your weave grow from a tiny seedling to an immense beanstalk growing out of your head and traveling up to the sky where a giant named Kroy lives and where treasure awaits you for the rest of your days. Now, of course, this was the big event of last night's episode, but before we can get to Fight Brunch, we have to slog through some other details first.
There wasn't any moving this episode, which was a blessing, but there was my second least favorite Real Housewives convention: talking about planning. They're not planning a trip, they're talking about planning a trip. When they actually do the planning, there has been so much talking about the planning that when all these little grenades sit down around some Brioche French Toast and Egg Whites Benedict (which sounds vaguely racist) everything just explodes and the shrapnel scars all look horrible when they're sitting around in their bikinis laughing about what a great time they're having while they forget all about the planning when they're actually on the trip.
So, yes, lots of planning talk. NeNe and Gregg go over to see Cynthia and Peter and they talk about the trip. Then Cynthia puts on her smart lady glasses and has brunch with Kandi and they talk about planning. Then Kandi and Phaedra go to some weird store called Box Wood and talk about planning and then Kandi gives Phaedra some "Kegel Balls," which are little spheres that you place in the vagina and hold onto so that your netherworld gets super nice and tight. They do all this in a store called Box Wood, because they cannot write a double entendre between the two. They are strictly single entendre, but two single entendres does not add up to a double entendre. So we just get Box and Wood, each standing on their own, unexplored. Sorry, back to planning planning planning. Blah. Nothing interesting happened in any of these discussions that wasn't worn on Cynthia's face. Does she think she's Spike Lee in a Nike commercial or something? Has anyone told Cynthia what year it is? Does she still care about what happens to Jennifer Love Hewitt?
There were a couple of interesting meetings however, Portia, a pile of rags brought to life by the wizard Gargamel to capture Smurfs but then turned to the side of good, finally gallumphed out of the forest and married her husband Carvell, who is a Cookie Puss that melted and then was brought to life as a man made of ice cream. They are in sweet, sweet love and they make sweet, sweet love on the nightly because one of the rags that Gargamel threw in the pile was the one that kept next to his bed for "private time" and, well, that made Portia into a total sex fiend. So they're banging away, but they can't have a baby. That's because there was something wrong with Portia's lady parts. She goes to the doctor who waves a magic wand and then Portia's lady parts work again. Oh, miraculous day!
Portia's approach to motherhood seems to be that of an 8-year-old's holding a doll by one hand as the rest of it drags through the dirt. "I want to have four babies, two boys and two girls because that is just what my mommy had and I want to be a mommy just like my mommy. But I want to have twins, because they are awesome and have super powers and I will name one twin Olsen and one twin Doublemint because that is what you name twins. I only want to have babies two times and then I won't have to get fat." This is where Portia holds her head down and pouts in a completely adorable way, with her twisted pigtails hanging down around her face just so.
Not only is Portia a child, she's also kind of stupid, but she's like awesome stupid. I can't quite explain this Portia character other than the fact that she is blissfully vacant and no one seems to want to correct her or help her on her way. She meets with Cynthia and NeNe to talk about the charity she works for and says that her charity needs help 265 days a year. Now, I wish it were the case that the charity was fully staffed with volunteers for 100 days of the year and now they just need help with holidays and weekends and Tuesdays (because no one wants to give their time freely when all those Fox sitcoms are on) and that is what she meant by 265 days a year. But no. Portia does not know how many days there are in a year. She does not know many things. She does not know that Christmas is always on the same date. She does not know the boiling point of water. She does not know about exchange rates. She does not know how to bookmark a webpage. She does not know that eating yams will not give her twins, even if they did studies in Africa. She does not know that Bethpage is a town on Long Island and not a girl from her third grade class called Beth Page. She does not know that a cold cut sandwich isn't called that because it is sliced in half and not warm. She doesn't know any of these things. She is a ball of rags that runs around singing "La la lala la la, la lala la la," which is a song she learned from the Smurfs before she turned against Gargamel.
Speaking of evil sorcerers, Kernya Moo-ah is certainly possessed by the devil. Remember that story she told a few weeks past where she was hiking down a trail and a black snake crossed her path? I think when that happened an evil spirit wafted up from that animal and entered her body through her nose and has completely taken over. She's like that nun on American Horror Story where one minute she is being perfectly nice and sweet, but you know it is totally fake, like that hint of artificial sweetener you get when drinking the clear Gatorade. Then the next minute she has black pupils and she's speaking curses in Aramaic and is floating in the air and raising her arms into the sky over a virgin chained to the alter. That is what is going on Kernya Moo-ah.
We see this when she meets up with Phaedra and Apollo. She brings along her man Walt and then just shamelessly flirts with Apollo in front of their respective significant others. In Apollo's defense, he doesn't play into it, but it is making everyone squirmy. Phaedra is sitting on her fists so she doesn't punch this bitch square in her face and Walt is just slumped over with his undershirt hanging out of his sherbert colored button down in a pose that says, "What you gonna do? I'm lucky she'll have me." And Kernya is all, "Damn, Apollo, you are foine!" which is a direct quote, more or less.
Well, the four of them are going to ride Go Karts and Kernya shows up in a dress and heels because that is exactly what you wear when you are about to squat down into an exposed car and race around a track in front of decent human beings. It's apparent that the evil spirit that resides in Kernya Moo-ah's body is a speed demon because as soon as she gets in that car she starts to freak out. "Aye Aye Aye," she rattles as she grimaces at the camera. "I don't need a seat belt. I feel the need. The need for Speed Demon!! Aye Aye Aye." She shows her fangs and looks at Phaedra with glowing eyes and she just turns up her shoulder at Kernya, hoping that she just has some gas or something. Then Kernya starts shouting, "I am so evil. I am so eevvvviiiillll. Aye Aye Aye!" She speeds off with a big cloud of dust behind her while Phedra just fans it out of her face and spits the grit out of the side of her car. Apollo races confidently and assuredly, like anyone with a body like his would. And then Walt, sad Towtruck Walter, pulls up the rear, going so slowly it's like little bursts of smoke are going to come busting out of his tailpipe at regular intervals trying to propel him along. He's still confused because there's not another vehicle trailing his on the way to the garage. He's not used to driving like this. He's used to picking up after the demolition derby. But Kernya, she is possessed by the devil. She crosses the finish line and hops out of the car and draws a pentagram on the pavement and the whole course bursts into fire and transports everyone to hell where they will have to sell their souls just to get a glass of water, just to get back to Atlanta. That is the hell that Kernya Moo-ah has wrought.
Speaking of Kernya Moo-ah, Kandi invited her to Planning Brunch and Cynthia Bailey got her face tied up so tight it almost swallowed one of her giant earrings that were made from the crystals of two dying stars that lived next to each other. Then Kernya was like, "Oh, you're going to Anguilla? I would like to go," and when no one said anything she said, "OK, well, I'm coming, and that's that. Read my contract!"
But this whole Planning Brunch thing was a mess. First of all Pheadra arrived with not only lilies but all the lilies in the damn valley and apologized to Cynthia for butt dialing her and talking shit and told her that her quote was taken out of context and she didn't mean anything negative and she was very sorry. You can say a lot of things about Pheadra, but she is always classy. I give her mad props for being up front and trying to make things better.
OK, so then everyone files in and they're talking about the trip and Kernya invites herself and then Kim, who is the last one there, starts hemming and hawing and saying she might not be able to make it. All that I learned from all the previous planning meetings was that they all planned their trip around Kim's schedule and had rearranged all their dates so that she and Kroy could join them. Kim is making all this noise about how she might not be able to go because she's so pregnant and her due date has moved around and she has to talk to her doctor and blah blah blah. But it's just Kim making excuses, as she has for the past two years. It's just like our other favorite Kim, Kim Richards, always showing up to a party late, leaving a party early, or bailing at the last minute. She just doesn't want to be around.
Then Kim says that she and Kroy are going on their own vacation while the rest of them are in Anguilla. That is it for everyone. Kim says, "Well, we could have kept it in the country. We could have gone to Miami or Destin..." Ha! Those are Kim's alternatives. Destin? Destin! Are they all going to ride together in a pick up and camp out at your aunt's trailer and then go to the Applebee's for dinner. Destin. NeNe is pissed off at, in the first time she's had an extended conversation with Kim, she lets her have it and lets Kim know that she is ungrateful and a liar. NeNe might have gone too far, but I'm on her team in this one.
Anyway, this is all bullshit. As the ladies say, if Kim had concerns she could have brought them up earlier. She knew how pregnant she would be, and she sent the dates saying when she could travel. She either should have sent real dates or sent her regrets. But no, she made everyone rearrange their lives to go on this company trip that is contractually obligated and now she is totally skipping out on it. And they all know it has nothing to do with pregnancy, it has to do with Kim being over it.
Yes, Kim is entirely over these women, she is done being on the show, she is done. She wants to go back to her townhouse that is crammed full of tacky furniture and nuzzle with her baby and let her daughters run around the house eating pizza and yelling, "Mom! Mom!" and not answering. That is what she wants. Last season I loved that Kim sort of gave up and was over it all, but she was still engaged with the group. She didn't want to mess with any of their fighting, but she would still go and be the voice of reason. She would be her fun self, which is all we ever wanted from Kim. Now... well, now she's just boring. Now all she talks about is moving, fast food, and where she's going on vacation. It's like having my Cousin Audra over for dinner, and there is a reason why I do not ask her to come down from Rochester very often. It is because she is boring.
Kim is getting her own show, an extension of her Don't Be Tardy for the Wedding special and it will be all about her life and her family. She is the southern Bethenny Frankel, but the difference between the two of them is that Kim now holds the platform she launched from in the highest disdain. Bethenny was too smart to ever do that. She grew past the Real Housewives but she never thought she was better than them. Well, she probably thought she was, but she never let on. She was always grateful for the opportunity, and Kim should keep that in mind. Next week when she goes pushing the camera out of her face, she needs to remember that she owes everything to that camera in her face. She owes it all to those people around that table. She owes it all to acting out on television and being fun and crazy and entertaining.
But she got up and left Fight Brunch. She waddled off to the car and had her confrontation (which we'll see next week in full) and Kroy drove them back to the town house, and Kim couldn't do anything but look out the window. She just watched it all go buy, the closed businesses in the strip malls and the little bits of trees that separated one development from the next. The sprawl scrolled by as they stopped and started and drove in silence, the radio turned almost all the way down humming something incomprehensible, a skittering baseline of the quiet around them.
Kim stared out the window and thought about it all. She thought about that day when NeNe came over to her house with some guy she barely knew who had a camera. "Come on, Kiiiiiimmm," NeNe said. "Snatch on that wig and let's go. We're going to Sheree's and we're going to make a tape."
"A tape?" Kim said, in that way she always did where a question could be the ultimate indictment. "What kind of tape?"
"We're gonna make a tape to be on a show, honey. We're going to be reality stars, and we need someone like you."
"What am I going to do on a show? I got two kids, a fat ass, a boyfriend who won't leave his wife, a bunch of debt, no prospects, and nothing to do this afternoon but drink a bunch of wine and goof off."
"That means you're coming?"
"Damn straight I'm coming. We're going to make the hell out of that tape."
"It will probably be nothing.""Yeah, who cares. I just want to have some fun with my girls."
"Yes, we are all about fun. Plonk!"
That's how it all started, she can't forget that day, and how it all changed after that, how it changed everything. She would admit that it even changed her. Kim was starting to get hot and she took off her wig and put it in her lap. Kroy looked over at her, not to say anything, just to see what she was doing and he put his eyes back on the road, his jaw fixed tight. That's what she liked the most, finally being around someone quiet, someone she could be herself around. She messed up her matted hair and turned away from the side window and looked straight ahead. She reached out and put her hand over Kroy's as it rested on the stick shift in the middle of their seats. She just let it lay there, her heat transferring into him. And he didn't move his hand but bucked up his middle finger to sort of grab in between her knuckles. He was there for her. Just her. She kept her eyes fixed on the two yellow lines in front of her, going straight and straight and straight into the future without an end, impossible to see where the lines stopped. "It's just not fun anymore. It's just not fun at all."
Follow Brian Moylan on Twitter @BrianJMoylan
[Photo Credit: Bravo]
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Here is a profile of a Manhattan mom who loves only one thing more than her children: preparing for the apocalypse. Behind her gigantic shoe closet packed with rows of Jimmy Choos and Louboutins, there is a gorgeous panic room that is unrivaled in New York City. It's full of gas masks, canned goods, Cipro (in case Junior gets a sniffle), radiation detectors, Rapture-proof suits, an elaborate water purification system that runs on hot air and houewife spit, a Bible, the complete I Love Lucy library on DVD (they're going to need something to watch), a flat screen TV (for Lucy), and 14 magnums of champagne in their own fridge that is run by a self-contained generator. No, this is not Doomsday Preppers, this is ¡Que Viva!'s Closet, a show about the lifestyles of rich and famous whackadoos who think that the end of the world is near.
Can you believe that ¡Que Viva! is a Doomsday Prepper? Actually, yes I can. This is the thing about ¡Que Viva! that I've learned over three short episodes: she is absolutely nuts. That is about the only interesting thing that we learned last night on the episode of Real Taint Scratchers of Crazy Village. But she's not crazy in the way you think she's crazy. Let me break it down for you, like she breaks down her own urine while waiting in her Luxury Bunker and turns it back into drinking water (there is a bit of alchemy involved). ¡Que Viva! really badly wants to come off as normal. She wants everyone to see this nice, Jewish girl with blond hair and a little bit of work done around the head and neck region and think that she's all wonderful and polished and elaborately manicured like the tail of Standard Poodle. But she's not, she's nuttier than a Fruit Cage (which is the name of Andy Cohen's Hamptons home). It's not because she's all, "Because I got my leg chopped off by a manure machine I'm not scared of flying and subways and being trapped in places and heights and machines and Transformers movies and did you know that the Mayans say that 2012 is the end of the world and I can't possibly be in a sunken living room because I feel like I'm never going to crawl out again and oh, God, is that macrame, I just can't, please take it down because all those knots make me sick to my stomach and I think I'm going to hurl oh and I'm afraid of throwing up. Yup, it's definitely coming, where's your bathroom. Oh shit, I'm gonna puke. FFaopiwhgpwoieghaWer."
That is the crazy ¡Que Viva! wants you think she has. This is the crazy she puts on display so that you don't see what's lurking below. This is the trash in the Death Star's compactor so that you don't see the tentacle monster lashing in the murk below. The crazy that ¡Que Viva! has is an ever shifting crazy that accommodates the insanity around her. It's like a retrovirus, as soon as you think you have her crazy figured out, she goes and changes it like she changed her son's first name. She changed her kid's damn name! That is the darkness that misfires in the folds of her brain. Then she insisted that her husband not wear a wedding ring because she thinks more girls would hit on him if they knew he was married. Then, at boozy brunch my total favorite Sonja Morgan took a sip of her bellini and a drag off her imaginary cigarette (because in my mind Sonja T. Morgan is always wearing opera gloves and smoking an imaginary cigarette) and said, "Oh, honey, if he was wearing that ring when you met him in Bed Bath &amp; Beyoncé you never would have pulled him over to that hard sample bed with the Nautica duvet and showed him that special trick you do with your prosthetic, now would you? And it wouldn't have stopped me, honey. I would have hit on it either way, so you might as well just put a ring on it because, well, you just should."
Then ¡Que Viva! goes to the jewelry store and does it. She is convinced by Sonja Morgan, Slut Whisperer, into buying her husband a ring for no particularly good reason, but only because she has been called out and must adapt. She's like a midochondrian of melodrama. She's just stone cold loco en la tete. That's what she is. And then, after Sonja convinced her about the ring, she takes Ramona to the jewelry store to help one out because she is a "jewelry expert." Oh please. If Ramona Singer is a jewelry expert, that Chef Boyardee is an Italian cuisine master with three Micheline stars. But ¡Que Viva! thinks that she's getting some entré into the blingosphere because she's letting Ramona's eyes (that never need a loop to determine the purity of a diamond) take her to a jewelry store. It's like the time she went shopping for creepy dolls with Marie Osmond.
Sigh, ¡Que Viva! A million scattered sighs like your million quaking neuroses, clattering up against each other like stones on the shore, burnished to a high polish after the years and years of anxiety washing over them in waves. Stop trying to appear normal, because we all know that when you take off your mask, you look like that scary librarian in Ghostbusters.
Know who is not crazy? Carole Radziwill, my new best friend forever and ever. She is just so freaking cool. All the girls are like "Oh, we can't possibly take the subway," not because there is something wrong with the subway, but because they think that they can't take the subway. Like there is something that makes them better by submitting themselves to the utter inconvenience of sitting in traffic with a driver. Carole is just like, "You bitches be stupid. I'm buying you all MetroCards for Christmas and you are going to take the damn subway. And don't wear leather shorts when you come downtown. This does not make you cool. It makes you look like a hairdresser from Hoboken going out for a night in the Meatpacking District. Knock it off." That, right there, is why I want to take Carole out to lunch and talk to her about being awesome. (Carole, this is a real offer. Call me!)
Then Carole talks about how she doesn't understand how any of the women can want to be with the same man for the rest of their lives. Now, I'm sorry Sonja T. Morgan, you're still my favorite, but this is something a real slut says. We all know that Sonja is only sleeping around until she finds one many who can afford her expensive habits and keep up with her insatiable sexual desires. Once that happens, she's going to mate for life. Carole, on the other hand, is a true skank. And I do not mean that as a pejorative in any way. In my universe, skanks are totally the best, just like Carole. They're just so busy working on themselves that the men are just incidental love apparatuses that come in to satisfy them and buy them a few nice dinners before fluttering off into the sunset like an exhausted mayfly.
At lunch with Ramona and Mario she said the skankiest thing of all, "I only flirt with married guys when their wives are right there." Amazing! And that's what she does. She sits down next to Mario — who is, by all estimations, one of the more dreamy of the Househusbands even though Ramona keeps his sex organs in a Hello Kitty cookie jar on their bedside table and only lets him strap them on after two glasses of Pinot and a night of fighting with other Housewives (that's when she's at her horniest) — and she just starts flirting with him like Kelly Bensimon eying a bag of Jelly Bellies. It was sick. I loved it. I bet Carole is one of those ladies who also flirts with gay guys, just cause. Just to keep those skills keen.
OK, I better start talking about Sonja Morgan, my favorite, because I'm afraid she's going to get jealous. Now, I love Sonja and part of the reason is that she is trying to make it happen in business and, well, she might as well just open a lemonade stand on E 85th Street. She'd make as much money doing that. That is actually the perfect business plan for Sonja. She can have her intern mix the Country Time in the house and then she can sit on a little stool next to a low table with a hand-painted sign taped to it and smoke her imaginary cigarettes and tell the crowd about the time she lived in Italy with Count Chocula, the heir to a cereal fortune, for six years before she caught him making out in a secret passage guarded by a suit of armor with Boo Berry. Then she'd lean over and tell that intern, "Honey, use more ice and water. We're trying to a run a business here, honey."
That is much better advice than she got from Ramona Singer who told her to forget about her business with the toaster over cookbook (which is Sonja's equivalent of "fetch") and focus on her catering business called Sonja in the City, because it is 2003 and she just finished eating a Magnolia cupcake. Anyway, Ramona's business advice basically boils down to "Write it down in a notebook." That is the secret to Ramona's success, a little Trapper Keeper that she picked up at Duane Reade back in the day and has been scribbling away on loose leaf paper ever since. That is what launched her empire. Notebooks!
Sonja thinks this is kind of shitty advice because as unequipped as Sonja is she still knows her elbow from an apple orchard (that is an expression I just made up). So she decides to go talk to "This Heather." I love how she says that. It's like how your grandmother talks about the receptionist at her doctor's office. "This Heather told me that if I go to the pharmacy they'll have this Benadryls cream and that will help with the itching." She said it like that, like it was this random person that none of us would know. "This Heather."
Alright, so Sonja goes to visit This Heather (which I think I might call her from now on) and she's full of great advice. She tells Sonja how to fix her logo, how to brand her image, how to integrate her revenue streams, how to create a Power Point presentation, what to do with her first round of venture capital, when to file for her IPO, whether she wants to be on the NYSE or NASDAQ, how to sign up for subscription for the Wall Street Journal, and then she gives her a pair of Yummie Tummie™ (that stands for "Trade Motherf**kin' Marked, Biatch") and sends her on her way. I wanted to hate This Heather, but I might be coming around, even though her fake smile reminds me of a giant puffy cloth clown painting in my pediatrician's office that used to make me shit my Underoos.
As a reward for passing Econ 101, Prof. This Heather decides she's going to take everyone on a trip to London. Sonja is like. "Yes, please," (inhale from imaginary cigarette). "Momma needs a vacay!" This Heather calls up Carole and says, "Bitch, we're going to London. Whut! Whut!" and Carole says, "Sign me up!" OK, I am completely convinced that these "Call and let's go on a vacation" calls are totally fake. It happens on every Housemonkeys franchise and I just think it's all bunk. The producers have plotted this out months in advance. They must have. This isn't a vacation with friends, this is work. This is contractually obligated business travel. This is like going to a plant visit in Ames, Iowa. This is not party fun time.
Then, of course, This Heather calls ¡Que Viva! right when she's jewelry shopping with Ramona and doesn't invite Ramona to London. Of course she wouldn't because Ramona treated Heather like a booger that wouldn't get off her finger. And then...What?! What just happened to my TV? Why did it go black? Oh shit, Time Warner, what the hell did you do this time? "Hello, thank you for calling Time Warner Cable. If you are calling from Midtown Manhattan there is a cable outage. Sorry about the inconvenience. We're working on correcting the problem." But...But...But...Shit. Guess I'll never know what happens.
Follow Brian Moylan on Twitter @BrianJMoylan
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Our old friends TLC told us to not go chasing waterfalls, please stick to the rivers and the lakes that you're used to (yeah, try to get that out of your head now). The conniving castaways on Survivor could stand to listen to TBoz, Chili, and Left Eye (RIP) because last night things were getting shifty with our tribal alliances and everyone was chasing a water fall, or a water slide, rather. The show started out, I think, with bats. Everyone was standing around clubbing the crap out of Colton Combie with baseball bats and telling him what an awful spoiled brat he is. No, that didn't happen. They were real bats. Like the animals. The B-roll makers at Survivor love the bats this season and we see their stretched electrical tape wings at least seven times an episode as they try to hide their heads from the light. Enough with the damn bats already. It's like watching a rat try to burrow its way out of a spandex factory. Let's get right to the first challenge, shall we, since it was the THIS RECAP HAS BEEN BROUGHT TO YOU BUY THE GOOD PEOPLE AT 7-UP THE UNCOLA — ENJOY A COOL REFRESHING GLASS OF THE UNCOLA TODAY! REFRESHING! Oh, sorry guys, it looks like I got hijacked by some product placement. Remember when that happened on Survivor all the time when they would be crapping in the Charmin toilet and drinking out of Aquafina canteens on their way to the Doritos reward challenge to win a Ford truck filled with Exxon gas? Now all they can get is one old timey cooler full of glass 7-Up bottles. Why did they make it seem like the Survivors dug up this cooler of soda in the beach somewhere like it had been buried for decades? You can't buy those glass bottles in the store even if you tried. Anyway, they walk up to the challenge and Alycia says, "Wow, that looks like a big wedgie." The two giant wooden water slides, while impressive, did not look at all like someone yanking your underwear up into your buttcrack. I don't know if wedgie means something else at the school where Alycia teaches, but, for the rest of us, it only means one thing. For the challenge everyone is divided into two teams and they have to go flying down the water slide (trying to avoid wedgies, is that what Alycia meant?) and get these crates and bring them on shore and then solve a puzzle with them. "The first ones to solve the puzzle win reward. Want to know what you're playing for? You'll spend the afternoon at a 7-Up oasis that looks remarkably like a pool in Fire Island with a little tiki hut and you will drink 7-Up. There will also be 7-Up to 7-Up and you can 7-Up with 7-Up all afternoon. 7-UP!"Challenge, challenge, challenge — Leif, the last one from his team to go flying down the giant Slip-N-Slide (WARNING: This challenge was not sponsored by Slip-N-Slide and any assumption that it was is unintentional, at least until they pay their bill) goes absolutely soaring off the end of it and tumbles through the sand on the beach like one of the tortoise shells from Super Mario Brothers, just careening into everything and knocking it off the screen as he sails along. It was funny. And now I feel bad for laughing at a little person going sailing through the air. But it pays off and Lief, Matt's abs, Sabrina, Christina, and Candice Bergen (whose name I later learned was Kim, but I'd rather just keep calling her Candice Bergen) win the reward and go off to Fire Island to jump in the hot tub and eat, as Lief said, repeatedly to the disgust of his fellow castaways BARBECUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE. While they're in Fire Island, Lief is eating a stack of hamburgers taller than he is and Sabrina the Survivor Witch cozies up to Candice Bergen and is like, "How far ahead are you thinking?" "Far," Candice replies. "Yeah, me too," Sabrina says, wishing Salem was curled up in her lap right now. That is why these two are the most dangerous players in the whole game, because they're thinking far. From the beginning, Candice has been looking towards winning. As we've seen from Survivors past, those are the people who usually end up with a million smackeroonies, the ones that think three votes ahead and have it all mapped out. Those that scramble and don't have a plan and wait until the last minute are those that always get screwed over. They decide to target Matt, even though he's on their alliance of former Salani members. They're thinking they can either get the guys on their alliance to go along with them or they can just get back together with all the girls, who now outnumber the guys six to five. Oh, these two are crafty crafty crafty. Jay and Troy (who I will not call Troyzan because I am not an idiot) know they need to vote off a girl this week to even out the numbers of men and women so that the girls don't get together in a "women's alliance" and kick all the studs out of the hen house. But Candice Bergen is smarter than that. She goes to Troy, knowing he already doesn't like Mike and says, "Mike is trying to vote you off." Troy gets all out of sorts and decides it's time for Mike to go. Oh, men. They have been letting women play against their vanity for centuries and it still hasn't changed. So, everyone heads off to the challenge where they have to get a bunch of puzzle pieces through a ladder maze and then they have to use those pieces to solve a puzzle. Challenge, challenge, challenge, and Jay, shockingly comes from behind to win. Maybe it was the accent or maybe it was something he did, but I always thought Jay was stupid. Not so much anymore.Back at camp, their third strong alliance member Blonde (I can not for the life of me remember her name, so that's what we'll be calling her) is stupid enough to bring up voting out Matt to yokel Jay in front of Christina and Alycia, who supposedly aren't in their alliance. He knows something is up and tells them all that he doesn't trust the girls, because he's afraid they're going to get together and boot him out. The girls have a little conference and then realize that Jay has taken Mike off for a little talk in the woods. "WHAT?!" Candice Bergen says. She runs after them and catches up just as Jay is about to tell Mike that they girls are thinking of voting them off. "We're going to vote out Christina," Candice blurts out, like she just got caught doing something illegal. Oh, she is an operator. She sees her plan going amiss and she changes it on the spot to appease Jay and to keep Mike from having any idea that he's getting voted off. But then she goes back to the girls and talks it out. Do they make a move now and start voting off the guys and change the game, or do they get rid of dead weight Christina, who has about as much chance of winning this game as the beaten body of Colton Combie, and deal with the boys later. I always say if you're going to make big moves in Survivor it's better to do it early when you have enough bodies to configure them in your favor and before alliances get too deep. If you try to make a move too late, the alliances are calcified and you have much fewer options. Vote out the boy, Candice Bergen! Change the game. They go to tribal council, which usually I find totally ridiculous. Rarely does anything interesting happen at tribal and never once in all the seasons of Survivor I have watched (and I have watched them all) did someone say something at tribal that influenced the vote. By the time the get there, the vote is already decided and they're just waxing on and on to fill up time. What was mildly interesting is that no one thought they were in danger last night. What? If I was on Survivor I would be thinking I was going home every second of every day. Being a paranoid player is being a good player, because you always have to pay attention to the small clues and cues that people are giving off that could indicate your fate one way or the other. Jeff goes to tally the votes and there are two votes for Tarzan, which were probably cast by people who hate him because they got bad boob jobs and he's a plastic surgeon, two votes for Christina, and the rest voted for Mike's abs to be sent home (spoiler alert!) and to be sadly covered by a shirt for the rest of eternity. Now the only abs we have left to look at are Jay's and Troy's, and while they are nice abs, they aren't as nice as Mike's who has some of the best abs we've seen in a long time. Shame about the eyebrow though. But the vote revealed something crazy going on in the tribe. The two votes for Christina came from Tarzan and Lief. The two votes for Tarzan came from Alycia and Christina, and Jay and and Troy joined the rest of the girls to vote out Mike. That means there is a lot we didn't see. We didn't see that Tarzan and Lief are totally on the outs with the rest of the guys and Christina and Alycia are on the outs with the girls. Even worse, Candice Bergen's plan to use Troy's vanity against Mike totally worked and Jay, who may be as stupid as I always thought, let the girls get the upper hand by voting off Mike, seemingly against his best interests. If I was Jay, I would get Troy, Tarzan, Christian, and Alycia together and vote off the girls in power. Doesn't he see how this game is shaking out? It's because he's listening to TLC. He's not chasing the waterfall, he's sticking to the river and the lake that he's used to. Too bad Candice Bergen is the one running that lake and she is going to drown all of their asses on her way to the win. More:'Real Housewives of OC' Recap: The Mud Slide Brought It Down Hey, Jeremy Renner, Stop Whining About the Press AttentionChanning Tatum Gives Elton John a Lap Dance

This week, Hollywood invites you to visit The Town, the new action/heist movie by sophomore director Ben Affleck, who also stars. It is the story of a group of Boston bank robbers who must contend with a tenacious FBI agent, played by Mad Men's Jon Hamm, dead-set on bringing them down. I loved Affleck's directorial debut Gone Baby Gone, so I am jazzed to see what he can do with one of my favorite genres. But the impending release of The Town got me thinking about heist films in which the cops-and-robbers relationship, effectively the relationship between right and wrong, is boiled down to an adversarial matchup between two characters. Here are a few of my favorites...
Heat
There is no possible way I could construct this list without mentioning Michael Mann's seminal 1995 heist opus. Not only did Mann create the quintessential conflict between cop and robber, he did so by reuniting AI Pacino and Robert De Niro for the first time since The Godfather: Part II! There is no touching this film in terms of performance, cinematography, thrilling hold-ups or casting. My favorite scene in the film, the moment that canonizes its aptitude for this list, is in the coffee shop, where master thief De Niro flat-out tells dogging cop Pacino that he is not afraid to put a bullet in his head if he gets in his way. When any other actor says that, it's a threat. But when DeNiro says it, it's officially the day you peed your pants on set...unless you are cool-as-ice Pacino.
Danger: Diabolik
Mario Bava may be considered one of the holy triumvirates when it comes to Italian horror, but my all-time favorite film of his is Danger: Diabolik from 1968. This adaptation of an Italian comic book spins the various adventures of an incredibly adept criminal with a penchant for both black latex and grand larceny. The cop that is bound and determined to stop him is thwarted so many times that it becomes a running gag throughout the film that his superiors keep getting replaced as he fails to stop Diabolik. I don’t know if I prefer Diabolik escaping the dedicated cop via catapult or humiliating him in front of a television audience with the aid of laughing gas.
Inside Man
Having never been a fan of Spike Lee, I was absolutely blown away by his 2006 heist film Inside Man. Short of getting De Niro to battle Pacino yet again, there really is no finer casting of the film’s foibles than Clive Owen as the mastermind of the bank robbery and Denzel Washington as the cop doing everything in his power to save the hostages Owen is holding within. I love how Inside Man takes the typical dynamic of cob and robber and gives it an interesting political spin. The plot never flinches from the undeniable fact that the Owen’s character is always in control and that he really has anticipated the every movie of law enforcement. The ending is fantastic.
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three
No, I am not citing another Denzel film but rather referring to the 1974 original on which Tony Scott’s remake was based. The plot is essentially the same -- a madman and his crew seize control of a subway train and hold the passengers for ransom -- but it is superior to the remake by leaps and bounds. What is so great about this film is that the hero is a transit cop who triumphs by employing impeccable detective skills; not often does a transit cop get the chance to cinematically shine. Also, Robert Shaw plays the leader of the hijackers and is sinfully brilliant in every film in which he appears.
Un Flic
Admittedly, this choice is more than a little esoteric. Un Flic is a French film about a nightclub owner who is also a master thief and is planning the heist of his career. The director of Un Flic is a personal hero of mine by the name of Jean-Pierre Melville. If there were ever a filmmaker who knew how to allow both thieves and cops to epitomize cool, it was Melville. He would often refer to the trench coats and fedoras worn by noir-film heroes and villains alike as being the characters’ armor, comparing them to ancient warriors. Interestingly in Un Flic, the policeman investigating the robberies is the thief’s good friend, which creates a wonderful tension throughout the film.